Interviewing: The Real Life RTS Game

I’ve been doing this interview song and dance, and it’s an odd game. You think ET for the Atari 2600 was bad, but this is right up there only with better graphics.

Geek translation: it is hard, not because you are not skilled at video games (or the job you are interviewing for), but because the process itself doesn’t make a whole lot of logical sense.

I’ve been corresponding a bit with Rory on this subject matter, asking advice, which is a bit ironic considering he’s currently unemployed. However, he’s had some really great things to say that have made me a bit less nervous about interviewing and answered some of my WTF questions.

I wanted to share some of the wisdom he’s given me, passing along wisdom to you like the old man in the cave in Zelda giving Link his sword. He gives great advice, telling you not to go alone, and giving you a sword. Link, now sharing the company of a sword that shoots lasers, is better equipped to deal with the issues.

Do not go alone. Allow me to arm you with a laser shooting sword. It will be like carrying Rory with you, only not literally. I mean, technically you’ll still be walking in there and facing moblins and octorocks all alone, but it’s a metaphor you see.
 
So, below you will find some excerpts of emailed advice I edited together. Enjoy!

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Technology Job Interviews: The Real Life RTS
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PART A – Sure, certify, but don’t look like a jerk.
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Get a few certifications – not tons, as it’ll make it look like:
 
1. You’re trying too hard
 
2. You’ve been out of work so long that you’ve had time to get every certification in the book
 
I used to consult for hiring managers, and I was always suspicious of the people who had tons of certifications. In my mind it translated to “No real world experience.”
 
Experience + A few certifications = always good.

 
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PART B – Don’t be too cool for school.
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Attending courses and seminars is important. The best way to make connections and find work is to sleaze your way into an extensive network.

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PART C – Pwn. Don’t be pwned.
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If you don’t feel comfortable, then treat it like a game. It really is a game, anyway. You’re playing an RTS (Real Time Strategy). Your goal is to amass as many resources as possible so you can stomp all over your enemy. Your enemy is, of course, your potential employer. Your employer is not your friend. Your employer will try to get as much work for as little pay out of you as possible.
 
Except…
 
…when you’ve successfully sold yourself.
 
If you get an interview, then walk in with confidence bordering on hubris. Demand pay that’s well above what:
 
1. They want to give you
 
2. What your experience dictates
 
Demanding more makes them want you more. You won’t get what you demand, but you’ll get more than they would have given you otherwise. You also suddenly look more appealing than the other applicants because you have confidence, can back it up, and will stand your ground when they try to screw you.

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PART D – Fuck up, but do it with confidence.
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Be willing to totally fuck up. Go in to your first few networking opportunities without your inhibitions. Make a fool of yourself, but not too much. Do it enough that you’ll feel confident when it’s time to approach people “For Reals”.
 
Where ever you are, target the person in the room with the most influence. People, especially geeks and creative types, are afraid of eye contact and what they perceive to be alpha males/females. Don’t be afraid of these people. Approach them. Ask questions that display your knowledge, but will also appeal to their egos. Anyone who teaches anything, or does any public speaking needs other people to approve of them on a constant basis.
 
The insecure crowd, of which I’m a part, will take every opportunity to talk about themselves, what they know, and how great they are.
 
The people I always remembered from giving my talks were those who approached me afterward, asked a couple questions, taught me something new, and did so without the slightest bit of supplication.
 
Showing nothing but humility to people in charge, especially managers and other morons, will bump you out of the running. They’ll use you for their own purposes for the duration of the interview. Then they’ll either hire you on as a low-paid sycophant, or they’ll never see you again, their personal needs having already been met.
 
When selling yourself, this is what you need to communicate:
 
1. You’re confident because you have every right to be.
 
2. You’re charging what you charge because you’re worth it, and although there are cheaper people out there, they’ll just fuck everything up. You’ll have to be brought in anyway to clean up their messes. This is true. I made a lot of money when people gave in and brought me in to repair all the damage wrought by the unworthy.
 
3. You’re an equal, but not disrespectfully so. You don’t want to appear prostrate. If you do, people sense it, and they will enjoy stepping on you. Put yourself on the same level as them, and use that to fuel your confidence. You aren’t lording your amazingness over the hiring manager, but you’re also not begging.
 
4. MOST IMPORTANT: You can and will make the company money. Demonstrate your value through whatever means you can, and always focus on how you can make them money. That’s the point of hiring you. Applicants get hung up on how much they will make, forgetting that the purpose of the job isn’t to pay people, but to turn them into cash for a business.
 
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PART E – Binary Truth
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While you don’t “have to” lie to get a job, you’re much more likely to get a good job if you mangle the truth a bit. I’m compulsively honest. I’ve shared extremely private thoughts with hundreds of thousands of people, and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. So, when I tell you all of this, keep that in mind. I’m freakishly devoted to honesty, and maybe you are too.
 
However, in binary, 10 = decimal 2.
 
When you search for a job, you aren’t operating in familiar territory. You’re working in binary, or hexadecimal, or octal, or whatever. The same basic rules apply, but the representations of the values have changed.
 
Tell a child that 10 = 2, and you’ll have a hell of an argument on your hands. But 10 does equal two in the right context.
 
You aren’t lying when you say that 10 = 2. Under normal everyday conditions, 10 = 10, but when you’re working in unfamiliar territory (like binary), 10 = 2 is true.
 
Job seeking takes place in its own pocket of the universe. You deal with humans (kind of), and you probably use English to communicate (here, anyway), but because everybody lies, the baseline for truth is altered.
 
Understand as well that honesty and truth are only barely related.
 
Honesty is what happens when you provide what you believe to be the case without intent to deceive. Truth is absolute.
 
If your code of ethics tells you that being honest is the right thing to do, then being honest is right.
 
Regardless of your personal values, however, you will never be correct in this case.
 
Right and wrong are moral decisions based on those personal values. They’re like honesty.
 
Correct and Incorrect are absolutes like truth. And given how little we really know about the universe, the likelihood that you’re ever going to be correct is infinitesimal.
 
So, you can be right while being grossly incorrect.
 
To map it back to the discussion, you can be honest without telling the truth.
 
The truth is slippery, anyway. Most people would agree that the sky is blue, but, in reality, the sky most certainly is not blue. What’s blue is the light in the shorter wavelengths of the visual spectrum that didn’t get filtered out on their journey down through the atmosphere.
 
You could be honest and say, “The sky is blue.” It wouldn’t be the truth.
 
Now, apply this to the job world. The fact is, you don’t know what other people know. That is, you don’t know where their skill levels truly lie. How do you like that double-meaning? You don’t have nearly enough information to determine how qualified you are or aren’t for a job. Based on the interviews I’ve helped to conduct, I can tell you that the hiring managers sure as hell don’t know what the job is about or whether you’re qualified. They’re lost as anybody.
 
Yeah, they’ll do some talking, and, if they’re smart, they’ll bring in some of their employees who do the same or similar work to what you’d be doing. Even in that case you can’t assume anything. They may have hired entire teams of people who bullshitted their way through the interviews. Most of those people will have some skill, some knowledge, but usually no natural aptitude for their work. So when they question you, they won’t ask the important questions. They don’t know what the important questions are. They just don’t know what in the hell they’re doing.
 
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PART F: Creativity works
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Now we’re going to get you a useful context in which to operate while conducting your search:
 
1. Assume the worst about other people. Most people are average. That’s what average is. They don’t have creativity, and they fake their way through life. If you are creative, you have novel ways of looking at things. Even if you assume that these people have a decent set of skills, creativity is something that can’t be faked. It’s in high demand right now. People are learning that creativity is much more important than many other qualities.
 
This is true.
 
When searching for test pilots to become astronauts, a bunch of pilots with extremely high IQs were rounded up.
 
It was thought that these pilots would do the best job of reacting to the unexpected, and since the unexpected is what awaited these people, an aptitude for handling crazy situations was required.
 
When these guys were tested, it was found that they reacted horribly. IQ tests are based on certain basic perceptual faculties, certain intellectual abilities, and so on. It’s all very linear.
 
These tests don’t measure creativity. There’s a French version that gets into creativity, but where logic and math puzzles can have “correct” answers, creativity isn’t so easy to measure.
 
The guys up in those planes could think their way through a situation, but they couldn’t feel their way through. And when the world is going terribly wrong terribly quickly, thinking through a problem is too, too, much too slow.
 
The high IQ pilots were replaced with a bunch of nuts. It turns out the wild, crazy pilots did much better. These are guys who had probably never tied their shoelaces the same way twice. They came up with new approaches to problems as a matter of daily routine. They were built for the unexpected.
 
Creativity is huge. Anyone can learn the linear aspect of assembling projects, but nobody can learn to be creative. You either are or you aren’t. If you have it, have confidence in that and value it over experience.
 
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PART G: KNOW
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2. Assume that the hiring managers don’t know what they’re talking about. This is nearly always the case. Even at Microsoft, managers sweat like mad over hires. It’s because they do not know what they’re doing. This is the corporate world. This is the business world. If the hiring managers are asking you what you want or what you’d like, it’s because they’re looking to you to provide guidance. They don’t know what to do, so they’re letting you run part of the interview. Take this and run with it. Or create this situation. But do your best to make it feel like it was their decision. That is, pick up on hints, questions, and so on, and work them into your game. Expand on their ideas for them. Where they drop off, pick up.
 
3. KNOW that you’re every bit as capable, if not much more so, as the other employees. Every job is a learning experience. You are NOT expected to know everything. You just have to demonstrate that you’ve got something going on and that you have the aptitude/skill/interest/determination to turn it into something bigger and better.
 
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PART H: Conclusion
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4. Don’t forget that 10 == 2. Job Hunt Reality is different than Reality. The values are changed. People have lied to the point that colors are swapped, humans breathe methane, dogs speak Italian, and so on. It’s all very Alice in Wonderland. You aren’t lying when you present a falsehood. You’re being honest in an unfamiliar context. Ask yourself what you believe about the situation. Do you believe that you deserve the job? Then you do. Do you believe that you can do the job as well or better than anyone else on the team? Then you can. It’s that simple.
 
Have fun. Treat it like a game. Look at your life as an experiment and take risks. If you’re already unemployed or have a job you don’t like, can it get any worse? Give new things a shot and trust yourself. Follow through even when you’re nervous. If you’re nervous, it probably means you’re taking a risk. Taking risks is the only way to stand above everybody else. Sometimes it works out, and sometimes you get stabbed in the face by a narwhal. That’s what risk is: it’s a potentially big win or a potentially big loss. It isn’t random or entirely up to chance. It’s up to you, your discretion, and your abilities whether a risk can succeed or not.
 
Don’t feel down because you fall on your face a few times. You’ll do that, maybe a lot. But there are jobs out there, and people need people to work them. People work jobs. Tons of people have jobs.
 
If those people have jobs, then you can have a job, too. There’s nothing magical about it. You just do it.

  • The Cowboy

    Thanks! Should I actually get the Microsoft interview, I’m bringing this along in my notebook.

  • Welcome! :) Rory deserves mucho props. I’m merely a messenger.

  • SteveJ

    Interesting….

    It’s definitely true that if you can oversell yourself, you ought to. Most companies are so afraid to fire someone, especially while they’re still new. If you can fake your way in the door and then stay on your feet long enough to figure things out, you’ll do fine. In fact that’s all I really look for when I do interviews, can you keep up with the conversation? Are you smart enough to interrupt me when I’m speaking nonsense?

    It helps that I know firsthand that any idiot can get a certification and if you have any skills whatsoever you can pick up a technology in two weeks and be a downright useful in a few months. I got a CCNA by skimming a book the night before and showing up for the test. My buddy keeps trying to get me to leave my current low-paying awesome job for a much better paying boring job. “It’s too bad you don’t have ASP .Net experience”. It doesn’t matter. Can I solve your problem? Do I know how to use a keyboard? Do I know what ASP and .Net are? It’ll be fine. Lose the “Must have 15 years of .Net experience qualifier”, substitute “Must know that 11 people have 10 years of .Net experience”

    Actually I find the hardest part in the hiring process is getting in the door if you don’t know anyone. I last job hunted 5 years ago and I couldn’t find the magic set of phrases to put on the ole resume and cover letter. Oh you’ll only look at resumes with XML programming experience? Yeah, I didn’t think being able to process a text file was resume-worthy. You feel like you’re reliving old spider web search days, make sure you embed in every page.

    And ET was friggin impossible. I also hated Top Gun for Nintendo, never could land on the stupid aircraft carrier.

  • “Most companies are so afraid to fire someone, especially while they’re still new.”

    Or they’ll put you through a trial period where you’re actually working as an “independent contractor”.

    “…you can pick up a technology in two weeks and be a downright useful in a few months…Can I solve your problem? Do I know how to use a keyboard? Do I know what ASP and .Net are? It’ll be fine.”

    I wish there was a way to prove or demonstrate that kind of adaptability in these interviews or on a resume. I can learn- I enjoy it even! I is reeel smaht. What can you do? Even if you try to learn every variation of software and every use of every language out there to try and anticipate what an employer may want, unless you used it for years while hired at a company, it doesn’t seem to count to a potential employer anyways.

    Must have 5+ years psychically anticipating and other divination. Strait up mind control a plus!

    “I didn’t think being able to process a text file was resume-worthy.”

    Ha!

    “…magic set of phrases…”

    That about sums up the whole process, doesn’t it?

    “…ET was friggin impossible…”

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-pzdPLfy9Y
    Be amazed. I was. It answers so many questions about my childhood.

    “…that’s all I really look for when I do interviews…”

    Where do you work, where are you located, and are you hiring? ;)

  • SteveJ

    I really can’t believe there was a point to ET. In fact I refuse to believe it. This is clearly an internet hoax.

    “Where do you work, where are you located, and are you hiring? ;)”

    My work situation is a little convoluted. Not hiring at the mo, I don’t even know what I’ll be doing in a few months when my current project ends.

    Good luck though, with Rory’s tips, you’ll at least have a good time playing the game.

  • “I really can’t believe there was a point to ET. In fact I refuse to believe it. This is clearly an internet hoax.”

    I’d like to say the same thing about this Interviewing RTS. :)

    I think ET actually might have been more enjoyable when it was purely ‘WTF is going on?’. I had so many theories as a child, all of them wrong… but, then, you might be right… those dots being ‘candy pieces’ for points? All this time they had nothing to do with beating the game? I don’t know if I can believe that…

  • The Cowboy

    I think I played ET for about 5 minutes before putting Combat back in. I barely remember the game.

  • The Cowboy

    OMG! I just watched the ET video, and it brought it back in all of it’s horrifying glory. Ouch. That was actually painful to watch. I can’t imagine what that game must have done to careers of the people who worked on it.

    “Ok, this guy was on the design team for ET. Trash. Next.”

    They guy is so calm while narrating the video, but I don’t remember it calmly at all.

    “Where is the landing zone?!? What does *that* symbol mean?” I remember getting carried off by the FBI guy. That’s about the point I took the game out.

  • “I think I played ET for about 5 minutes before putting Combat back in.”

    Combat!!! Hell, yeah. Now there’s a reason for me too hook the 2600 back up…

    “They guy is so calm while narrating the video, but I don’t remember it calmly at all.”

    Yeah, to him it’s all so clear and matter of fact. For me it was “Why is this KKK member taking me to ancient Rome?” “Where are all these holes coming from?” “Why did I die?” “Is my navigation system broken? Why does it have a question mark? It must be as confused as me.” “How many dots do I need to collect before I win?”

    I supposed the instruction booklet might have helped, (I think we got the game 2nd hand) but then again maybe not.

    I think Raiders of the Lost Ark was worse. At the time, I thought our copy was faulty, but it might have just been the game. Another just occurred to me.. Yar’s Revenge. I couldn’t figure that one out either. It made terrible noises too.

    !!! I just looked it up and would you believe the same guy made all three. Apparently there are no coincidences.

    Me and the designer were obviously not on the same wavelength.

  • I’m not sure how good that interviewing advice is. I think it might be helpful advice if you are interviewing for a sales or marketing position – a situation we people must sell themselves constantly as part of their job – but I don’t thinks it’s good advice for the tech field. I have been in the tech field for about 20 years, and I have also interviewed dozens of people for various tech positions, such as software engineers, DBAs, netadmins, and even software managers. The idea of an application trying to project overconfidence bordering on hubris would be a huge turn off.

    Technical skills aside, a big part of the interview (from the employers point of view) is to evaluate whether the candidate will fit in with the existing team. Is the candidate someone we would like to work with 8 hours a day? Someone could be one of the smartest sharpest applicants out there, but if they came across as a jerk or an arrogant person in the interview, their technical abilities count for zero. They won’t get called back – at least where I work. Based on past experience, those glimmers of negative traits seen in an interview only get worse in the day to day interactions if they get hired. And regardless of how smart someone might be, if they cause frequent conflict in the team, the group productivity would have been better off with a less skilled but more personable person joining the team.

    When dealing with grown adults, it’s far easier through training and mentoring to provide missing technical skills to an employee then to try to teach them missing or deficient social skills.

  • It’s interesting that you say “interviewing for a marketing position” as opposed to “the tech field”, because many tech jobs out there are as much part of marketing (or customer service) as they are tech (especially in web development, which is my thang).

    “The idea of an application trying to project overconfidence bordering on hubris would be a huge turn off.”

    I think that many people, especially geeks who have likely been introverts our entire lives, project a total lack of confidence. I think Rory is telling us to go into an interview being what we would perceive as overconfident, but is actually comes off as confident. Or, if you do go overboard, it’s easier to take a step back once you’ve broken out of that shell (two steps forward one step back). I don’t think too many of us have overconfidence as an issue. I know I’ve heard most people (including me) cite nervousness and being made to feel hesitant, inferior, or like you screwed up by not saying what they meant to. And as for people who are arrogant… they would be too arrogant to take this advice anyways! :D

    “evaluate whether the candidate will fit in with the existing team. Is the candidate someone we would like to work with 8 hours a day?”

    I’m sure that is what you’re looking for, but in an artificial (and brief) environment like an interview, I would imagine it is really hard to tell something like this. People aren’t themselves. They’re too busy being nervous and making their best attempt at projecting what they hope their potential employer wants to see. Nervousness at being judged makes people act differently than they normally would. In addition, a candidate doesn’t know the team their interviewing to be a part of.

    Showing that you believe in your abilities and can communicate effectively is one of the few things the person being interviewed can do that will certainly help their chances.

    But you’re totally right in saying that coming off as an arrogant prick probably won’t help you get a job. You want to show you are willing to learn. You make a good point in saying people are looking for not just smarts and skills, but even more so, those who can play well with others.

    Thanks for the benefit of your experience. :)